y, "Break his slumbers;" when and how he ceased to have a
sluggish and confused idea that such things were, companioning a host of
others that were not; there are no dates or means to tell. But, awake,
and standing on his feet upon the boards where he had lately lain, he
saw this Goblin Sight.

Then and not before, did Trotty see in every Bell a bearded figure of
the bulk and stature of the Bell--incomprehensibly, a figure and the
Bell itself. Gigantic, grave, and darkly watchful of him, as he stood
rooted to the ground.

Mysterious and awful figures! Resting on nothing; poised in the night
air of the tower, with their draped and hooded heads merged in the dim
roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy and dark, although he saw them by
some light belonging to themselves--none else was there--each with its
muffled hand upon its goblin mouth.

He could not plunge down wildly through the opening in the floor; for,
all power of motion had deserted him. Otherwise he would have done
so--ay, would have thrown himself, head-foremost, from the steeple-top,
rather than have seen them watching him with eyes that would have waked
and watched, although the pupils had been taken out.

A blast of air--how cold and shrill!--came moaning through the tower. As
it died away, the Great Bell, or the Goblin of the Great Bell, spoke.

"What visitor is this?" it said. The voice was low and deep, and Trotty
fancied that it sounded in the other figures as well.

"I thought my name was called by the Chimes!" said Trotty, raising his
hands in an attitude of supplication. "I hardly know why I am here, or
how I came. I have listened to the Chimes these many years. They have
cheered me often."

"And you have thanked them?" said the bell.

"A thousand times!" cried Trotty.

"How?"

"I am a poor man," faltered Trotty, "and could only thank them in
words."

"And always so?" inquired the Goblin of the Bell. "Have you never done
us wrong in words?"

"No!" cried Trotty, eagerly.

"Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?" pursued the
Goblin of the Bell.

Trotty was about to answer "Never!" But he stopped and was confused.

"The voice of Time," said the Phantom, "cries to man, Advance! Time is
for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his greater
happiness, his better life; his progress onward to that goal within its
knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and he
began. Ages of darkne